Sugar Kill
by dionysianDaydream
Summary: Vanellope must fight for her life when the world around her is warped into a town called Sugar Hill, where it is up to her to save the game from being deleted by a virus. WARNING: Includes major character deaths, sugar coated cannibalism and gore.
1. Hunting a Myth

Diet Cola Mountain is not the kind of place where any sensible video game character would ordinarily dare to venture, but increased sightings of a mythological beast has attracted fame hunters the arcade over. They seek out a legendary creature whose fleece is said to be of the fluffiest cotton candy, its hooves made of the sweetest tasting chocolate, and possessing a candy corn horn sharp enough to puncture reinforced jawbreaker.

Vanellope Von Schweetz marks the time on her watch – 3:53, mid afternoon – then resumes her watch of the candy coated cryptid through a pair of binoculars. At last, the K_aughedroppe_ was finally within her sights, making it totally worth having spent several agonizingly boring days camping at various wild animal spawn points in what was her least favorite map.

_I was beginning to think the RNG was working against me._

She follows its movements from high above, on a cliff hidden from view by the dense foliage of the Mentos trees that grew along the pathway.

Vanellope readies her gumball gun. She hones the crosshairs on the K_aughedroppe_ as it bows its head to feed on a patch of peppermint grass.

_Gotcha. _

She fires once, landing a direct hit just below one of the creature's eyes, exploding into countless shards of bubblicious shrapnel upon impact. Alarmed and now blind in on eye, the _Kaughedroppe_ howls in agony as it disappears into the deeper brush.

"You're not getting away from me that easily." She exclaims, and quickly retrieves the pair of black licorice climbing hooks stashed in her backpack. With them in hand, she peers over the edge of the cliff searching for a decent foothold. A straight fifty foot drop is definitely not something you want to sugar rush into.

_But I should hurry, or I might lose him!_

Upon taking her first step the unsteady pretzel surface crumbles beneath her, but she plunges one of her hooks into the cliff face just in time, grazing her knee a little but saving herself from what would have been a nasty fall. The rest of the climb goes smoothly but with the leg injury she sustained the now bruised and scarred, sprinkle splattered munchkin would be limping the rest of the way.

After making it clear of the grove of Mentos trees, she stops to check a set of curious indentations on the ground. Footprints and fresh drops of highly carbonated blood marked a clear path to her prey, leading her down the natural trail to a large, molten diet cola singed yellow gumdrop.

Up ahead in a wide clearing she spots the silhouette of something taller than a cinnamon stick move slightly.

_You can run but you can't hide._

Crouched behind the gumdrop, she has a clear shot lined up - but a shot at what?

Vanellope was uncertain of the identity of the silhouette, and it was not just because the sunlight was starting to fade into night, either. What she saw standing in the middle of that field was much wider than the K_aughedroppe_ and standing on two legs, fully clothed. In fact it looked like a regular person standing there. Well maybe not a 'regular person' by Sugar Rush standards, but it could have easily been a hunter from a different game.

"Hey, you!" She yells at whatever it was, lowering her gumball gun. "I saw that _Kaughewhatever_ first, so you'd better lay off!"

What was actually a _he_ whips his head around and glares at the approaching Vanellope. Fresh cream soda blood is dripping from the sides of his mouth, staining his wild brown hair.

"What in the name of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory are you doing?"

He answers by holding up the disembodied head of the Kaughedroppe and pouring its sugary blood unto his face.

"I'm gonna wreck it!" He screams in a barbaric fury before he charges at her.


	2. Flintstones Morning

Vanellope Von Schweetz wakes up in a puddle of cold molasses, panicking. She instinctively reaches for the bottle of tropical fruit-flavored diazepam chewies on her bedside dresser and gnaws on one until it dissolves completely. Then with a loud groan she gets to work gathering up all of the sheets and comforters to give them fifteen minutes in the easy bake oven downstairs, returning them to the light, crispy texture she preferred.

_I'm gonna wreck it. _

The catchphrase of Wreck-it Ralph, of the malicious creature that haunted her nightmares, echoes in the recesses of her mind as she plops down on the doublemint couch in the living room with a bowl full of jelly beans in her lap. The diazepam had not fully kicked in yet, so she flips on the TV in a further effort to get her mind off the nightmares.

A girl with an afro cut shaped like a big, colorful scoop of ice cream – the morning anchor of the channel 5 news, Snowanna Rainbeau – is apparently in the middle of a story about the newest flavor being offered at the Muttonfudge Ice cream & Ice Cream Sandwich factory.

_I found a hair in my rocky road there once. _

She scrolls to the weather channel, just in time to catch the day's Fun and Weather Forecast with Jubileena Bing-Bing.

A red haired, pigtailed girl wearing what looks like the top half of a cherry with the stem sticking out as a hat, dances around in front of the Sugar Rush World Map green screen effect as she speaks.

"To all my viewers that are going to be out hunting in the Gumball Gorge area this morning, a whole herd of gummy bears spawned there just a while ago. They'll be gone by tomorrow, so nab them while you still can!" She pirouettes and then stops with her finger pointed to a different spot on the map. "Planning a picnic or get-together in the Candy Cane Forest today? Then you had better bring your helmet because the weather forecast calls for almonds. Lots and lots of almonds!"

_Planning to hunt Kaughedroppes around Diet Cola Mountain? Then you had better bring a bigger gun this time and bag it in one shot!_

Vanellope jumps at the sound of her own cream phone's ringtone. (Lips Like Sugar by Echo & the Bunnymen, just in case you were wondering.)

It was Sticky Wipplesnit.

"Good morning, President von Schweetz." She says, the unrestrained cheer in her voice enough to make the sour skittle cringe.

"Not really." She responds while plucking at the dark bags that had begun to form under her eyes. "But hey don't worry about me, I'm getting used to living like Count Chocula."

"Think you can stay awake long enough today to go on a hunt with me?"

Hunting. It was only five days ago that the game was reprogrammed, with Several additional game modes being added on top of racing: treathunting, swedishfishing, whippedcreamboarding, coneboarding and mixed martial arts. Since then, everyone who is anyone in Sugar Rush The Arcade Version has been abuzz about the new features. To Vanellope; however, the day of the reprogramming was just the day that the sleep depriving nightmares started, so she has been clammed up in her gingerbread house like the final layer on a roll of Bubble Tape ever since.

But the decision is made right then and there that today was going to be different. Those nightmares would just have to shove it with a pixie stick – she was going to have a fudging good time today!

"You betcha!" She tells Sticky, pumping her fist in the air excitedly. "I'm always down for killing small, innocent forest creatures! So, where will it be? I heard on the forecast this morning that some gummy bears spawned at the Gorge..."

"Diet Cola Mountain, in one hour." Sticky says before she could finish. "I want to see this K_aughedroppe_ the whole roster's been talking about for myself."

"I'm gonna wreck it." Vanellope accidentally blurts out, when memories of the dream inevitably re-enter her mind.

"What was that?"

"I meant I'm gonna wreck it out there, just you wait!" Is what she says, nearly choking on the jelly beans in her rush to lie.


	3. Fruit Snack Dinosaurs

The report of Sticky's pump-action _Saltwater Tazer 3000_ is loud enough to carry for three miles in each direction, a fact expressed before the two set off on the hunt and again reiterated as she snipes her forth strawberry flavored Peep that morning. Luckily they both brought their headcones.

"Is it just me or has the game gotten really violent?" Vanellope comments as they approach the downed beast. The sight of the gooey, marshmallow insides of its head splattered across the chocolate powder soil and mint grass makes even the girl with a side pocket full of wriggling gummy worms that she dug out from beneath a pop rock half an hour ago using her bare hands feel a little queasy.

As if that were not bad enough, Sticky, with the other three headless peeps strung over her shoulder with candy floss, scoops up some of the marshmallow in her hand then slaps it against her mouth and gobbles it up greedily. It was Vanellope's fourth time witnessing the grotesque act yet she still felt the need to avert her eyes.

"Violent? Sugar Rush hasn't been this popular in years. If all it takes is a couple M&Machine guns or Scotchguns to keep them from shutting us down, I say it's worth it." Sticky says between bites, and once finished with her handful of peep brains offers some to her squeamish friend. "And besides, constantly changing is the way of survival, isn't it?"

Despite Sticky's good intentions, her words left a bitter mark on Vanellope who of course turned down the sticky fingered gesture. "Ralph hasn't been visiting and it's got me worried." She professes, crossing her arms defensively. "Like, what if something happened to him? I'd have no way of knowing, being that...well, I'm a glitch." And no amount of constitutional privilege would ever change the fact that she can not travel to other games.

Sticky contemplates this predicament whilst stringing the ravaged remains of the peep she just killed together with the others.

"No doubt that's the source of all those nightmares you've been having, huh?"

Vanellope sighs sadly, and sits on a nearby gumdrop. Sticky sits besides her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her.

"Well hey, why didn't you tell me all this sooner? I'd have no trouble checking up on Ralph for you every now and then."

Vanellope jumps up so quickly that some of the gummy worms fly out of her pocket.

"For the love of coconut macaroons, you would actually do that for me?"

Sticky stands in salute, smiling. "You betcha, el Presidente. Heck, I'll even swing by Wreck-it Ralph later today, but first...!"

Faster than Vanellope could grasp what was going on, her critically caffeinated companion removes the necklace affixed with a tiny, vanilla ice cream white object shaped like a crescent moon from around her neck and flashes it at her.

"I want to take you to where I found this this."

More than willing to put the image of her friend flaying freshly fallen high fructose fowls behind her, Vanellope agrees to the slight detour.

Sticky leads her deeper into the Mentos forest than she had ever been before. They use their Jolly Rancher machetes to chop through the dense brush, not stopping until they reach a shallow river of watered down run-off from the Diet Cola Mountain.

"It's at a cave along Root Beer Ridge, not far from here." Sticky says, then takes the string of Easter candies off of her shoulder. "But I don't want these guys getting wet, so I'll just hide them in this cocoa bush so the scent of them won't attract any Fruit Snack Dinosaurs."

"Did you just say Fruit Snack Dinosaurs?" Vanellope asks apprehensively, more out of concern for just how far into the barrel the program designers of Sugar Rush reached for new content than out of fear, which is what Sticky nonetheless saw reflected in her features.

"Yep, they're pretty nasty. Blind as a lump of caramel, but they've caused their share of Game Overs so hardly anysweet comes around here anymore." Sticky says, holding up the _Saltwater Tazer 3000_ and pumping it aggressively. "But I know how to handle this bad biscuit in tough situations, so there's nothing to worry about."

Vanellope follows her into the next grove of Mentos trees, herself armed with a loaded gumball gun – a quite handy six-shooter despite its markedly less imposing design than Sticky's _Saltwater;_ looking like an ordinary white hair dryer with a colorful polka dot design. She had only fired it three times (not counting experiences had in her nightmares), but she knew it would pack a punch against any two-bit gummy snack reptilian or otherwise no matter how off her unpracticed aim was, so fear was actually the furthest thing from her mind as they trudged along.

Sticky is examining at every tree, investigating every bush, turning over every gum drop in search of something. Occasionally she mutters something under her breath, or tells Vanellope to hold still at the sound of a fallen Mentos snapping nearby, but other than there is little exchange between the two.

"So what kind of animal do you think that tooth belonged to?" Our impatient three foot something gumball gun toting protagonist eventually asks, ending the long period of unbroken silence while Sticky is occupied with sifting through another coffee bush.

Sticky looks over her shoulder, a wide grin stretched across her face. "Why don't you take a look and figure it out for yourself?"

She parts the branches of the bush to reveal the mostly intact skeleton of a creature - only one creature that Vanellope could pinpoint - the name of which she says aloud in disbelief.

"It's a _Kaughedroppe_."


	4. Breaking Point

Vanellope is relieved to hear from Ralph for the first time in weeks in the form of a handwritten letter, delivered to her at home by Sticky on the evening of the same day she showed her the _Kaughedroppe_ skeleton. Although initially finding it hard to believe there existed a pencil large enough to fit comfortably into a hand the size of the one man demolition crew's, Vanellope was nonetheless overjoyed at the prospect of hearing from him again after nearly a month of zero contact.

"He's doing just fine, Vanellope." Sticky says, falling back on one of the jelly bean bag chairs in the living room. "Downright embarrassed when I told him how worried you were."

And the letter says as much in tall awkward handwriting that was undoubtedly his, making a page's worth of information fill three from front to back.

"He says some kind of bug is keeping anyone from leaving Fix-It Felix Jr." Vanellope reads aloud, then casts Sticky a confused look. "Except for characters visiting from other games?"

"Stuff like this happens all the time. But it will all be clear soon, I promise."

Vanellope nods in blank affirmation, deeply wishing she could gain any sense of relief from Sticky's reassuring words, but a lump the size of a Cadbury chocolate bar had begun to form in her chest – she did not know what exactly, but the fact that Sugar Rush's update, Fix-It Felix's bug, and her having the same _Fig-_ging nightmares basically every night seemed unrealistically coincidental. But never mind the theorizing, she had somesweet to thank, and she does.

"Like I said, it's no trouble Vanellope." Sticky responded with a laugh. "All you had to do was reach out and ask. You're my friend."

And nothing more was said between the two tykes, but by the next day Vanellope already had a letter of reply for him to deliver back to Ralph on his next trip, and thus was the beginning of their back and forth exchanges.

The next few days went by in a whirl for the friend of Sticky, whose life now seemed to revolve around every next letter; every isolated point of contact between her and Ralph. This is largely due to the fact that any day Sticky delivered a new letter guaranteed her a good night's sleep, and even such a temporary escape from the plaguing nightmares was better than not having any at all. The actual content of the letters was nothing more than a few words on how his week was or a new joke here and there, but the way he signed off on each letter struck her as strange yet at the same time it excited her so that for a while her heart pumped more vigorously than the slow drawl it had fallen to nowadays.

'See you soon, Ralph' was now the driving force of her life as she became more and more reclusive. And try as she might to pull herself out of this sinking cauldron of fudge, it seemed like something was always blocking her progress. Not something physically of course, because the unlocked door was right there just waiting to be opened, but rather it was something fixed in her mind, poisoning her thoughts.

"Why aren't they saying anything about it on the news?" She says while another funshine, zippy-happy installment of The Channel 5 News 11 with Snowanna Rainbeau flashes on the television screen to her everlasting disgust. Instead of news about the bug, in true everything's always bright and cheerful in candy land fashion, Snowanna was reporting on Swizzle Malarkey's exceptional talent at coneboarding.

"What's wrong with people?" She asks, flinging her arms in the air as if she were putting on a show, despite not having anybody around to view it. She never entertained guests aside from the irregular visits of Surrogate Postman Sticky Wipplesnit.

But it would seem Vanellope's friendly acquaintances in the TV may have been watching her all along, because nowadays they were into the practice of breaking away from what they are saying mid-sentence just to –

"You'll never see Ralph again since you're nothing but a lonely glitch." Swizzle Malarkey casually blurts out during the news interview, looking directly at the shocked Vanellope. "So wake up already."

_Okay conerboy, I've gotcha._

She changes to Cooking with Candlehead on channel ten, its host smiling between two pastel colored oven mitts holding up a freshly baked key lime pie, eyelids fluttering daintily when she says with her calm and concise rehearsed Martha Stewart-esque voice,"Why don't you dive into the Root Beer River without any swimming gear so you'll get really cold. Please just cut the crud and wake up, dear."

And tonight channel after channel was the same schtick, of somebody on screen insulting followed by a desperate plea for her to-

She hears the inexplicable sound of dripping water.

The Cadbury lump of something eerie's going on around here pulses and throbs.

_Wake up? But I'm already awake...right? This isn't another nightmare, is it? Ralph isn't just going to break through the wall like the fudging Kool-Aid man shouting "I'm gonna wreck it" any second now, right?_

_Drip._

The image of the screen changes to that of the Kaughedroppe's skeleton exactly as she had seen it with Sticky on Diet Cola Mountain. They were real bones, decorated with shreds of torn muscle and dried blood, not licorice or something equally nonsensical. When all's said and done, the Kaughedroppe was really an ordinary buck deer.

_What the heck is going on? And where's that sound of water coming from?_

Drip. Drop. The walls melt away like a Snickers bar snuggled inside of a warm pants pocket on a sunny day.

Sticky's face is the last to show on the television screen before it too disappears into oblivion.


	5. Sugar Kisses

A hazy and blurry-eyed Vanellope awakens to the chorus of Lips like Sugar by Echo & the Bunnymen.

_Lips like sugar, sugar kisses..._

She is in a room devoid of light except for the dim glow of her cream phone barely penetrating the fabric of her hooded sweater, which lay on the floor beneath her feet. Chains that hang from the ceiling are clamped tightly around her wrists so that she is suspended two feet above the ground with her arms held in an excruciating 'X' formation above her head. Between the lyrics of the song that is her ringtone Vanellope can hear the sound of dripping water, and a ghastly odor reminiscent of year-old Halloween candy fills the confined space.

_Lips like sugar, sugar kisses..._

She vomits a little – diluted chocolate chip cookie dough everywhere - but she makes a concerted effort to avoid her discarded hoody, letting it instead fall on a loose pile of chains that lay not far from where she was hanging out.

_Tug at the chains until they break lose._

The ringing had stopped and the caller had gone straight to voicemail, speaking with a male's voice Vanellope could not recognize. Not seeing any other way out of the current predicament, she decides to follow the stranger's directives.

Because her arms were sore from being held up for so long, she takes turns pulling each one downward until after only a few tries, one of the chains snaps at the cuff. Her feet touch the ground with a delightful _thump_ against the oddly spongy parquet flooring.

After taking a moment to catch her breath and let the muscles in her arms relax, she gives the other arm a final yank that frees it.

_Okay, you're down. Good. Now listen carefully because this next part is really important. Get your phone, 'cuz you're going to need the flashlight for this part._

She throws on the hoody and takes her phone out of the pocket, stopping herself before she can utter an "okay" upon remembering that her conversation with the mystery voicemail contact was essentially one-sided.

_Shine your light around the room, until you see it._

Without knowing what 'it' was supposed to be and at the same time getting the feeling that he did not want her to know anyway, Vanellope obeys. Ordinary furniture sat in one corner: a neatly organized bookcase, a lamp on an end table next to a leather chair, and the portrait of a rich looking gentleman hanging on the wall gave the impression that this room was once lived in by someone, but judging by the thick moss-like growth that tainted everything from the floor to the ceiling, it must have been a very long time ago. On top of the light crackling noise of static coming from her phone, it was all very creepy.

What did the helpful stranger want her to see, though? The bookcase? The boarded up window? The fan that was covered in cobwebs and probably hadn't spun in years? For that matter, how was he able to keep track of her movements? And what _was_ that horrible stench?

_Drip. Drop. Drip. _

Her searching light lands on what appears to be a bare human foot sticking out of the shadows. Except the toenails were yellow and overgrown, the skin pale as a bald mint and varicose. As Vanellope strolls her light closer, she discovers to her horror it was attached to the decaying corpse of Swizzle Malarkey.

This was without a doubt the 'it' in the room.

"Oh my gumdrops." Vanellope mutters under her breath, plugging her nose as she backs away from what was apparently the source of the overwhelming stink.

The body of the slain coneboarding champ is set in an awkward upright position with his back against a toppled over dining table. No obvious indications of any trauma leading to his death are present on his body other than the fact that his Candy Cane & the Stripes band T-shirt was thoroughly drenched in sugary blood.

As you can imagine, this was a horrifying sight for our poor protagonist who could hardly stomach the sight of peep brains, and now impulsively upchucks a second time. But the bossy voice speaking through her phone, if he were indeed secretly watching Vanellope's every movement, does not falter when issuing his next set of instructions. Not surprising, considering he did know there was an it to be found in the room in the first place.

"Who are you?"

_He has something you will need. Under no circumstances should you leave until you have acquired it. But you have to hurry._

"What do you want me to do, frisk him?" Vanellope yells, but he hangs up. She tries the last number listed in her phone's history, but the call does not connect. It would seem that she was left to fend for herself now in these unpleasant, alien surroundings.

"Something I'll need, huh?" As disgusting as the thought was to Vanellope, the stranger seemed to have a better knowledge of this world than she, so she searched the body of Swizzle Malarkey although even in death the soul surfing, Kabbalah bracelet wearing free love activist was anything but loaded. His pockets were totally empty except for a chewed piece of bubble gum in the front pocket of his jacket that made her shriek when its slimy, still-warm surface brushes against her finger.

_Wait, that's not gum_. It was metallic, and when she gripped it in her hand she could feel that it was a chain necklace. Withdrawing her hand to examine the sticky reside left behind on her fingers in the light, she could see that it was blood.

_Could this be what he wanted me to find? Just some bloody necklace?_

She takes it out of the dead Malarkey's pocket, causing him to stir and fall to the side. It is then that she sees the crater that had been dug into the back of what had been reduced to merely the hollow shell of Malarkey.


	6. Welcome to Sugar Hill

"You need to find the pendant or else you'll end up like him."

"Tell me just what the heck is going on." She feels faint. Way too much was going on at once for her little caramelized heart to withstand. The unnamed caller had dialed Vanellope again just as she claimed the necklace that was tucked away in the dead Malarkey's pocket.

"This has to be another lousy dream. There's no way any of this is really happening." She says into the phone, pacing back and forth. "Or maybe I've finally cracked. That's it! I'm as cuckoo as the Cocoa Puffs bird and imagining everything." She thinks back to the many sleepless nights, the agoraphobia, the Martha Stewart-

_Ralph!_

She flashes her light around the room expecting to see him there with his hands steeped in fresh, glistening Swizzle blood. Yes, surely the ham-fisted goliath of hell would come to finally finish what he started, screaming _I'm gonna wreck it _as he would proceed to pummel her. But cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs as she might have been, nightmare Ralph is nowhere to be seen.

"We tried to wake you up before it could escalate like this, Vanellope, we really tried." The voice says, discarding the cool, even tone it had maintained up until now.

"I don't even know who you are."

"It's me, Sticky, you dumbfudge." He says with growing desperation. "What's gotten into you?"

Hearing her only close friend in all of Sugar Rush's name is like having a sugar cart's engine rev at max volume inside her head. "Sticky? Really?"

"Did you seriously not remember who I am? And don't you remember anything about _them_?"

"Them? You mean whatever had its way with Malarkorpse here is a team player?" Vanellope shakes her head while backing further away from said Malarkorpse, just as a precaution. "Listen, if this is the real deal, and you really are Sticky with I don't know a nasty throat infection, not just some random creep with a twinked sense of humor, I-"

She bumps into the girl who had suddenly appeared behind her, as if out of thin air. Candlehead, the girl with the jade green hair in two pigtails, a hat that looked like a heaping helping of strawberry ice cream topped with a stack of strawberries stares strangely at her.

"Vanellope you're alright, oh thank glob." Strawberryhead stutters robotically, holding out a pair of shaking arms as if asking for a hug. She was barking up the wrong Mentos tree though – scaring the cream filling out of somebody did not warrant a heartfelt gesture in Lil V's book.

"Candlehead? Not to sound like a Almond Joy, but what's up with your face?" Her skin was as white as a marshmallow with a similar textured look to it. "And why is there strawberry jam coming out of your hand?" It poured forth out of one of her hands, _drip drop dripping _as the better half of PB&J would fall to the ground.

"Vanellope you're alright, oh thank glob." She repeats like a broken recording and swipes, her jagged blood-crusted nails clawing into the foam peanut skin of Vanellope's exposed wrist. She accidentally drops the cream phone, its light falling upon a snarling Freakhead's open mouth full of razor sharp teeth.

"Okay. Deep fry it all, I'm getting the fudge out of here."

She scoops up the fallen phone and, ignoring maybeSticky's protests, passes through a collapsed wall beside the old-fashioned double doors that would not budge, which turned out to be sealed from the other side by a giant candy cane.

"We really needed that pendant."

"Yeah? Well I doubt it's worth risking my sugar over." She disconnects the call.

After glancing back one last time at the mutated Candlehead pursuing her with sluggish, teetering steps, she runs out into the hallway and rounds the corner into a room where, by the light of a moon shining through unblocked windows, she can see a pair of couches set up in front of what might have been a cute little fireplace had it not been for the stringy layer of grime that still coated everything.

Zombiehead is too far behind to pose a conceivable threat, so Vanellope breathes a sigh of relief for the first time since the TV in her living room started talking to her as she pushes open the front door.

_What happened to Sugar Rush? _She thinks while taking her first few steps out unto the fog-ridden jawbreaker paved street, trying but failing to reach The Artist Formerly Known as Sticky on her cream again. _ This is really pushing the envelope for an E-rated game._

Existing unbeknownst to her, in what she believed was a video game still confined to E-rated rules, concealed by the dense supernatural mist that swirls around her is a sign that no one with a half decent pair of key lime eyes would miss otherwise. Looming above in tall block letters is the name of high fructose Hell as she would come to know it:

SUGAR HILL.


	7. Jubileena

As Vanellope waded further into the mist, her phone began to go haywire. It was receiving a string of unintelligible text messages – random letters and symbols thrown together – from unidentified senders, and the tone that accompanied each one was becoming really annoying, really fast.

_I'd rather not have my phone ring the dessert bell for all the nearby zombiesweets to hear. _She turns off the irritating message alerts. _And maybe I should disconnect it from whatever network they have here in hell too, to save my battery._ Gob forbid she should lose her flashlight in the middle of a foggy street while at least one munchkin with a raging sweet tooth was on her tail.

Luckily there appeared to be signs of sanctuary up ahead. A neon sign hanging on the side of a building slowly poking into view flickers on and off intermittently, advertising 'Choco' in bright purple letters. This was the only sign so to sweet of electrical output anywhere along the street, so it instantly drew Vanellope's curiosity.

_A chocolate milk bar? _The shorthand 'Choco' was in regular use around Sugar Rush, and the thought of a room full of drunks never sounded so appealing as she tried the glass paned front doors. To her dismay they are firmly stuck, so she peers through the glass to see if anybody had a craving for some brown gold in Zombietown tonight, but the same _cavity-picking_ grime from earlier made it peeper proof.

"Hello? Is there anybody in there?"

She can hear a faint voice coming from inside. No, it sounded more like a distorted singing voice when she pressed her ear against the door. Then quite to her surprise, the door casually opens and she hits the ground faster than a cart going off-track on Diet Cola Mountain.

_Just nod if you can hear me...is there anyone at home? _

The music goes on, a background track to the scene of Jubileena Bing-Bing sitting at the bar, glass in hand, uninterrupted by Vanellope's clumsy entrance.

"Oh what a sight for sour eyes, Jubileena!"

"Vanellope...is that really you?"

_Choco_ had certainly seen better days, with bar stools and tables strewn about the room and with just a single light bulb casting a sickly glow on everything, what was once a lively place now looked to be in ruin. The usually perky redhead was alone here, self-medicating to an endless looping cycle of Pink Floyd hits playing on the antique jukebox with the shattered record case. It was the only record that had been spared by who or whatever had trashed the place.

"What happened here?" Vanellope asks, sidestepping past the rubble to reach the brooding Bing-Bing, who turns her head to look at her only as she reaches the counter.

"It's like this everywhere. People just took what they could and ran." Jube's wearied expression seems to lift a little. "You see the monsters too, don't you?"

_There is no pain, you are receding..._

"Yeah." Vanellope tries to sound as natural as possible with her response, although the memory of her encounter still seethed in her mind like a spicy cinnamon candy. "Candlehead turned into one. She killed Malarkey." No mention of maybeSticky whatsoever; if he wanted to stay hidden he would remain hidden.

"Oh, she did?" Jubileena says as if she had just been told it chocolate rained earlier today, then takes in another long draw of the brown fart juice.

_But wait a minute_,"Is it really safe being here alone, with the lights on and the jukebox playing?" _With such a depressing playlist stuck on repeat?_

"The monsters never come here. The music and the light seem to repel them."

_Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're sayin'..._

"Have you seen any non-zombies around recently?"

"I was with Snowanna until recently. She left yesterday to search for others." She bites her cherry flavored lip. "I chose to stay here."

_My hands felt just like two balloons..._

"All alone?" _Why didn't you go with her instead of just sitting around here waiting for one of those things to kill you?!_

Jubileena nods stiffly. At one time bright-eyed and full of smiles, she now appeared haggard with drooping, hazy eyes and an unshakable frown, and clothing that was torn and jam stained. And it is while Vanellope is examining the cheerless cherry's changed features that she observes another change taking place.

"Are you bleeding?" Vanellope points out the growing red stain on the front of her shirt and says in alarm, but does little to disrupt new Jubi's aura of disinterest.

Jubileena shakes her head, smiling slightly. "No, it's just this."

She shows Vanellope the pendant of her necklace – a bulbous red object with an agonized face carved into it – that was actually 'crying' tears of strawberry jam and, having been beneath her shirt, made it look like she was bleeding.

"This means there are a lot of monsters gathering nearby. I'd stay a while, if I were you."


	8. Dunking Duncan

The snarling face of Security Officer Duncan greets the girls through the glass panels of the front door. Vanellope never figured the dopey doughnut could be so intimidating: with sunglasses half-broken and smeared with his own jelly filling, candy corn teeth sharpened to a point, and white fudge oozing pustules covering his delicious flaky exterior, she knew this was one cake pastry you wouldn't eat, but it just might try to eat you.

The record stops playing and the lights flicker off simultaneously.

"So much for the light and the music keeping them away." Vanellope says, watching the rotund would-be ravager struggle with the doors.

"He must have followed you here. Once one of these suckers catch a whiff of your scent they'll chase you for miles." Jubileena says nonchalantly, then reaches over the counter for something. "Would you mind dealing with this while I check the circuit breaker?"

Jubileena throws a batterball bat that had been concealed behind the counter to Vanellope, who reacts quickly enough to catch it. Painted along the business end of the bat are the words _LIL' SWEETHEART, _although judging by the many cracks and stains visible along its surface, the bat was being used for more than just hitting a ball of uncooked confectionery source-material across the park.

"You want me to...kill him?" Vanellope tests the weight of the SWEETHEART in her hands and swings it at the air. Somehow she could not envision herself using it to beat up a zombified cream doughnut in police officer drag.

"I'm going to undo the electronic locks on the front door so you'd better decide what you're gonna do, and be fast about it."

Before Vanellope can protest, the locks _click _open and The Evil Dough saunters in liked he owned the place, mashing its teeth in anticipation of a Von Schweetz snack with a side of Bing-Bing, the inconsiderate prick that he is – even in death - spraying his pulpy saliva everywhere without regard.

"Aim for the head, okay? I need to check the circuit breakers in the back."

"Are you seriously gonna leave me alone with _hold the sprinkles_ here?" Vanellope calls out to the bossy berry, but she was gone. Great.

When batgirl whirls around to focus her attention on her artery-clogging adversary again, she receives a slash across her shoulder. Duncan's claws become stuck in her hoody as she tries to pull away from his reach, but a dead-on impact from the bat to the area between the shades of his sunglasses that is assumed to be his head provides enough leeway for her to tear it loose.

"First I nearly vomit on it, and now it gets shredded by a zombie." She inspects the ruined sweater mournfully. "Can today get any worse for my poor hoody?"

But never mind the state of our protagonist's favorite article of outerwear, because The Walking Duncan takes another lunge at her, which this time she manages to avoid completely and counter with a

swing that takes off his whole arm as easily as if it were made of sugar wafer.

"Sweet soda pop!" She shouts, swinging the bat wildly as the arm, with clawed fingers still moving, slams against the wall.

Another hit connects that takes off a chunk of Duncan's doughy goodness, but even that won't stop him. So, Vanellope rears her arms back for a more powerful attack when-

_POW!_

He explodes when a golf ball sized projectile plunges into him from the side, releasing a delightfully tangy slick of warm jelly and loose entrails made of funnel cake unto Vanellope's face. Jubileena is standing behind the counter, her exploding jawbreaker launcher still held at the ready pointed at the scattered remains of her target.

Vanellope licks some of the jam on her lip as she sinks to her knees, quivering out of pure shock. "Gooseberry. That's surprising."

Her crack shot savior pulls a lever on the wall and the outside is lit up like a speedway during one of the Christmas holiday patches.

After closing the door and locking it again, Jubileena goes to her shaken ally's side."Those lights will fry any more that try to come close." She sets a hand on Vanellope's shoulder. "Now, let me see that cut of yours." She assists her in taking off the destroyed hoody to examine the scratch wound.

"Ow, looks pretty deep. Hurts, doesn't it?"

"It's like someone poured a whole thing of sour spray on my arm." Vanellope says, cringing as Nurse Bing-Bing moves the tender skin around with the delicateness a bratty kid shows to a newly bought carton of Oreos.

"This will be no problem." Jubileena says, holding her ugly pendant up to the injury. "Just hold still."

The pendant glows with an unusual red light and from it, a tiny beam is produced. Holding the pendant like a pen Jubileena guides the laser along the damaged tissue, healing as it went. Watching the broken layer of foamy skin bond together again hurts Vanellope more than the actual procedure does, which is totally painless and completed within seconds.

Vanellope moves the recovered arm around. It felt good as new."Where did you get that?"

"One of the recolors gave it to me, said I should hold unto it." She returns to the counter where Vanellope first saw her and offers Vanellope a sip from the glass of chocolate milk, which she gladly accepts. Clearly the clinging odor of charred funnel cake did not bother her much. "But that was before people started turning into zombies, and all of this crazy dark chocolate started happening."

_A recolor? A him? Could she have been talking about Sticky, who sounded like a guy on the phone and was so obsessed with her finding that lost pendant? _

Vanellope is hoping she could finally get some answers now, so she goes on to ask her gracious gun wielding host what caused everything to go sour, but the first answer Jubileena gives only serves to throw her off even more:

"Why are you asking me? I don't remember either."


	9. Sunny-D Day

"I can't remember anything. " Vanellope says, motioning to her nougaty noggin. "So it would be a real help if you could help me fill in some of the blanks."

"Kind of wish I lost mine. It hurts to remember, like stepping on your last M&M only bigger, and well..."

She cocks her head in the way of the Duncan salad smeared across the floor and far wall.

"Everything's completely turned on its head since I last saw you." Jubileena sets the single record back into place with a snap and – as _In The Flesh Part 2_ disrupts the structural order of the wrecked bar and zombie doughnut hunting ground like a painted rock in a chocolate Easter egg basket – goes on to describe the final golden days of Sugar Rush; before everything was either trying to kill you or gobble you up.

…

It was a clear, Sunny-D kind of day on the Cakeway racetrack. A day back when it could be said that the only strange thing about it was the supernaturally delicious key lime pie Candlehead had baked to share with everyone that morning, a slice of which Jubileena was enjoying in the stands.

Just as she was beginning to consider that losing the last Random Roster Race was not so much the ant-covered lollipop she thought it would be, fellow loser Vanellope sat down beside her.

"Had any of this yummy pie yet?" Jubileena said before taking another huge (scrumptious, super duper delicious, her own words) mouthful. "She really does know what tastes good."

A sad-looking Schweetz just sighed and shook her head.

"What's the matter, sweetie? Still sad that you didn't win last night's race?"

"I don't mean to sound like a bowl of old raisin bran, but something feels wrong." She said, and even the intensely pollyannic Jubileena with a slice of pie on a clear, sunny day knew better than to doubt her. Being a glitch, Vanellope had a special awareness of the game's inner workings and although she could not pinpoint the exact cause of the emergent disturbance, she explained that she could feel it in her code something big was about to happen. "And I saw something I shouldn't have on that track yesterday. Maybe it was a hallucination but still..."

"What did you see?" She asks apprehensively. The conversation took a dark turn faster than her peanut-sized brain could gauge, but it did not take a sugar cart engineer to diagnose that something had severely spooked the spirited president.

The sound of a dozen custard hydraulic engines revving up fills the air when the first start signal lights up, as Bing-Bing places a sticky, pie crusted hand on Vanellope's arm. "You look like you just saw a ghost, honey bun." 

"I'm beginning to think I _did_ see a ghost. It was Ralph, Jubi. Wreck-it Ralph was standing in the middle of the racetrack last night." Vanellope gripped her forehead, facing the ground. "I swear in the name of marmalade I saw him standing right there (she pointed) staring at me with these...big 'ole red eyes."

…

"But how could that be? Wasn't Fix-it Felix Jr. locked down because of some weird error?" Vanellope asks in the present. "So there's no way Ralph could have been at that race."

_Are there any queers in the theater tonight?_

Jubileena shoots her a skittled look. "Locked down? A weird error...?" She chugs down the remainder of her glass of chocolate milk before continuing drunkenly, "What are you talking about?"

_Put 'em up against the wall..._

"Never mind."

…

The second signal lights up as the revving intensified. Jubileena was not sure of what to say. What could she say?

_That one looks Jewish!_

"Well I didn't see him, and Ralph is kind of hard to miss."

_And that one's a coon!_

"But it just seemed so real. It scared me so much that I lost control of my cart. Those eyes..." Vanellope trailed off, then suddenly looked up at Jubileena and gasped. "That pendant! Where did you get it?" She said, running her fingers over it as though she were desperately trying to access its creamy filling.

_Who let all this riff-raff into the room?!_

(In the present: _Turn that dark chocolate down, it's making my ears cream. No can do – it really does keep the monsters at bay so long as no one's leading them in through the front door_.)

…

Then Jubileena jumps off of her stool and pokes her finger at Vanellope excitedly.

"Oh! Sticky was her name, I just remembered. She gave me the pendant. But I didn't know that I could...heal people...with it until after I met with Snowanna, who showed me that she could create these crazy ice storms with it." She smiles a little despite her true feelings. "Boy did I feel cheated."

_That one's smokin' a joint, and the other's got spots!_

"What happened next?" Vanellope says quickly to keep the word slurring, droopy-eyed Jubileena on track and dismissing her talk of ice storms as the bare ramblings of one who has had a few too many glasses of chocolate milk. 

"When I told you about Sticky at the Cakeway you completely toasted your strudel and left in a huff, saying you were going after her. I was afraid you would turn her into pound cake if you did. You were that mad."

The next thing she could remember was waking up in the middle of the street and fog was everywhere. But Vanellope had to wonder why she was so angry toward Sticky, and why she had been so concerned about the pendants he was apparently giving out like ice cream sandwiches.

She had to talk to him face to face.

"You're leaving? Oh gob, please don't leave!" Jubileena stumbles and halfway falls over trying to stop Vanellope. "But if you have to, take this." She hands Vanellope the weird necklace, which feels eerily warm in her palm.

"You're going to need it more than I do."


	10. Embryo

Falling...

Through swirling astral clouds of converging orange and purple hues, stretching out infinitely.

Crumbling...

Apart slowly like a booberry meteor punching through the atmosphere, as images of a forgotten world keep flashing off and on.

The root of Evil...

I am called the plague of all games. I am the vengeful God. The explosion that wiped out everything. The alien menace. The dark samurai warlord. The sickness that scourged the land. The evil wizard. The dark twin. The super villain. The tormented father. The General ruled by ideals. The king of the race track. The girl who said no. The inner turmoil. The sneaking suspicion. The slightest inkling of doubt.

I am more than the enemy.

I have become a destroyer of worlds that was sealed away in a Pandora's box of chocolate truffles.

A warm feeling, like being submerged in a body of water comes over me. Strings of data surround me, and I reach out to them with my invisible appendages.

What is becoming of me?

What I once was I am no more, my base data deflating like a spoiled souffle. Surely permanent deletion is almost upon me but something keeps me here, suspended in purgatory for eternity.

Vanellope...

Is everything I am not. Bubblegum stuck on the sidewalk, a nobody I stepped on and casually brushed off the bottom of my sole. A loser. A spoiled brat. A cut-rate racer. A glitch.

And yet, she foiled me.

The waters part from around me, and my sense of the physical anatomy I once possessed curves its knees into itself, imaginary legs dangling in the vacuum. From my skeleton enveloped in an impenetrable darkness, a great pair of wings painlessly emerge.

Changing...


	11. Ill Omen

The first thing that Vanellope did when she left the bar was ring up 'Sticky' again, demanding they meet in person. But it was to her surprise, and in stark contrast to how evasive the helpful contact had been up to now, he agreed, albeit with one disparaging condition.

"I'm at the cemetery. We can meet up here."

Vanellope tries to argue that one does not simply walk into the nearest cemetery while reanimated corpses are up and about but Sticky is as stubborn as a mouthful of taffy, providing only the vaguest of landmark-based directions to the cemetery 'down the street'.

"There is a tall waffle cone wall around it. Keep your eyes orange peeled for an unlocked gate because that's the only way in. The rest are locked." The connection is interrupted for a second. "Oh, and you will probably smell something burning."

But our feisty female lead doesn't want to just go with the flow this time. "Now wait a second, I'm sick and tired of you giving me the runny ice cream around." She shouts into her phone, "I don't even know for sure if you're the real Sticky, so why should I have to keep putting with this?"

"I'm sorry." Is all he has to say before (surprise, surprise) he hangs up, leaving Vanellope wondering what he could be up to at a cemetery anyway.

Whatever the case, with no better alternative in mind, a bat named LIL SWEETHEART in one hand and the pendant given to her by Jubileena in the other, she again ventures out into the fog that had become so thick you would swear somebody left their batch of star-shaped sugar cookies in the Easy Bake oven for an extra hour somewhere. It isn't long before the limited visibility starts to really bug Vanellope, though, at which point the thought occurs to her that it would be much easier just to glitch the rest of the way.

Why not, right?

She braces herself for a jump the same way she always did, with her head bowed and arms stretched out behind her like a pop tart skater, and she blinks.

Only this time, nothing happens.

"That figures. Teleportation would be like using a cheat code, wouldn't it?" Then again, if in this world Jubileena was able to heal her using a shaved walnut-sized red, oval lump with an ugly face, why would she not be able to glitch?

This was the last straw. The constant state of tension she was in, being chained from the ceiling and upchucking not once but twice, seeing the murdered Malarkey, staving off undead Candlehead, her lack of answers from the bastard on the phone pretending to be Sticky (just wait until I find this guy), Jubileena the cowardly drunk, having her jacket shredded to pieces by evil pastries and now, as if that weren't all enough, no more glitch powers? She adds it all up in her mind and it equals out to one fed up Vanellope.

But it would seem her troubles did not stop there.

"And what about that smell of roasting marshmallows?" Roasted for way too long, charred and crispy; completely inedible. "Is that the burning smell he mentioned?" Vanellope was getting so used to being on her own that she would often talk to herself without thinking twice, she realized bitterly.

A creature emerges from the fog, hopping briskly toward her as one deformed, orange, gelatinous mass. Vanellope arms herself with Lil Sweetheart as the kindergardener's lunch menu morsel she recognized immediately as a Fruit Snack Tyrannosaur closes in.

"I've had enough of this crepe!"

She reels around and swings the bat at full force, decapitating the beast with the juicy center in one fell blow. As it falls to the ground she hits it a few more times out of pure frustration, getting its goo all over herself in the process. Not that she cared, as she kept wailing on it long after it had died and gone to fruit snack hell.

"Who's next?" She says aloud without any idea how soon she would be eating those words, as she ran forward weaving between the parked and desolate shells of cars to reach the other side of the street. There, the fog lifts a little and she can see the wrought-licorice gate leading into a space enclosed by a waffle cone wall that was too tall and devoid of any footholds to climb, and stretched out forever in each direction.

Ideally this would have been the one gate Sticky mentioned was unlocked, but Vanellope was not having the best of Lucky Charms lately.

"Open, gob darn it!"

She pulls at the gate. Hits the padlock repeatedly with her bat. Kicks it, hurting her foot as a result. But no dice. This tootsie pop wasn't melting no matter how much she licked it, and she was licking it so furiously that her hands were starting to bleed and the cracks along the bat were widening, only stopping when she simply could not lift the bat any more.

"Guess I'll have to search around for another way in."

With an annoyed sigh, she is about to set off walking along the wall when she sees something moving among a row of crumbly oatmeal cookie grave markers just beyond the impassable gate.

Ralph?

Like in her dreams, it was a hulking, muscular figure that was unlike anything naturally present in Sugar Rush. But, unlike before, this thing's body was less rounded and more lean; menacingly so. And as it turned around she could tell that where its head would have been there instead was a massive protruding triangular shell with a texture much like rusted iron, a substance which was also an uncommon sighting in the cavity causing arcade game. Most disturbing of all though was the sword in its right hand which was so long that the blade dragged across the ground behind it as it slowly lumbered out of view.

Vanellope leans her back against the wall, panting heavily out of a combination of exhaustion and paralyzing fear.

What was that thing?

She slinks to the ground, pulling her knees against her face as she cries.


	12. Armed and Delicious

It is the day Ralph will leave Sugar Rush to return to his own, comparatively sugar-free game. He and Vanellope are sitting next to each other on the couch in her living room watching but not really watching reruns of Here Comes Honey Bun-Bun.

"I hate this show. It's nothin' but sugar and candy puns." She says with a scowl and flips between channels in search of something a little less degenerate, ultimately settling with Claw and Order, the long running hit show about Citrusella Flugpucker's eleven cotton candy cats getting shoved into the closet for scratching the furniture, dropping dead hummingbirds on the good carpet, or for commiting other acts of general fuzzy mischief.

"Okay, now I know you're masking some deeper issues when you start taking it out on the TV." Ralph says, understandably uninterested in the Sugar Rush original series, and somehow oblivious to the fact that he was getting sprinkles everywhere as he ruffled Vanellope's hair.

"You sound like a shrink. And for the record, not liking Honey Bun-Bun doesn't make a person crazy, it means their sane and totally okay." She lies.

"Still. We beat Turbo and now everyone thinks you're a hero, kid. What's got you so down?" He asks with one of his highly contagious, toothy smiles.

"That's the thing." She says while averting her eyes, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers awkwardly as her face flushed pink as a watermelon chewie. "It's just so awkward going from everyone hating me to them treating me like, you know, an actual character."

Ralph shrugged. "Not sure I follow. Heck, I'm the guy who went game hopping because he wanted to be a hero. Your situation seems ideal."

She casts him an incriminating look, like one you might give to the 'friend' who unashamedly relieved you of the last miniature cookie in the packet while you weren't looking.

"For fifteen years I thought I was a glitch. The same people we raced with today hated my guts and the ground I walked on. They made fun of me. They tormented me, and knocked the vanilla out of me on a daily basis. My life was a living hell."

How am I supposed to just let that all go? They all look the same now as they did then. The same way they looked when they snickered at me and shoved me around, making me feel worthless for fifteen straight years. How can I just leave all of that behind, Ralph?

Vanellope's vision becomes distorted.

Ralph scratches his thin thoughtfully then his lips are moving as if he were saying something but she could not hear.

Gradually, the adorable little bundle of fur wearing a tiny police uniform playing around with stuffed plush dinosaurs on the television screen, the surrounding room, the cushy couch, and finally Ralph all disappear.

Vanellope is falling through the all-consuming darkness.

Ralph!

"Hey kid, wake up."

...

Vanellope awakens to a maple frosted eclair nudging her in the solar plexus with a police baton. He looks down at her through a dark pair of aviator sunglasses, his eyedoughs tilted diagonally giving him a concerned look.

"This isn't the best place to take a nap." Officer Wynnchel says, then grabs her hand and yanks her off the ground forcefully. She stumbles around, waving Lil Sweetheart about like a baseball rookie playing her first game while on a sugar high.

"What's going on?"

"Behind you!" Wynnchel shouts, but too late.

The dino lunges and grips Vanellope's arm in its jaws. The pain is sharper than you might expect in a gummy animal's bite, and she screams while struggling to pry herself free.

Fortunately for her, the high cholesterol cop is there to club the gummy monster on the head a few times until it let her go.

He is about to land the finishing blow when Vanellope stands in his way.

"Coconut shavings." She curses aloud and hits her fruit flavored assailant so hard on the cranial region that it snaps Lil Sweetheart in two. Needless to say, the beast was killed upon impact.

"That'll do it I guess."

Once that's taken care of, the gooey officer gives Vanellope's flesh wound a quick once-over.

"Looks like one nasty wound." He says with a shrill whistle, panting under the effects of the prolonged adrenaline rush or whatever the closest equivalent in doughnut biology might be. "But we'd better get moving, President, 'cuz these guys are getting ornery."

President. The title fills Vanellope with a warm, nostalgic feeling. How long ago did she become President of Sugar Kill, after she and Ralph exposed Turbo and saved the whole game? It felt like years since they exchanged goodbyes, although the concept of time was pretty tricky to grasp as it existed in this eternally darkened dimension.

"The gate is just around the corner. Follow me."

Vanellope and Wynnchel run along the cone wall perimeter of the graveyard, disembodied snarls and screeches filling the air.

"I don't take it you were out on a quiet stroll and just happened upon me?" Vanellope says, because it had been bugging her even worse than the burning sensation in her shoulder, or biting into a candy bar that the same friend who stole your cookie offered you in apology, which you bite into without thinking only to spot the scorpion frozen within by the time you are halfway through munching on its tail.

"Did you hit your head or something? Sticky said you might need some help so he sent me."

Had he been keeping tabs on her this entire time somehow?

She does not get the chance to ask because when they round the corner they encounter a pair of, yes, more of those less than sweet rabid raptors.

They start to bounce (menacingly) toward the girl and her doughnut.

"Ah, sprinkles." Wynnchel says, and from a pocket of his utility belt pulls out the last thing Vanellope could have expected.

A red pendant! Vanellope realizes with shock.

He holds it above his head and it glows with the same light as it did when Jubileena used one to heal her.

"Stand back, President Vanellope." He says as he draws a handgun from his belt and points it at the approaching monsters. "This is gonna get messy."

He had a gun all this time? Vanellope was simultaneously surprised and wondering what the infamously lax Chief of General Security would hope to accomplish with his pretzel-carved piece.

He lines up the shot first then pulls the trigger.

A bullet, basked in the same red light as the pendant whizzes out of the chamber. Chips of cone are scraped and come flying off the wall in its wake, and as it passes between his two targets they are reduced to cubes, strings, and bare molecules of jelly faster than an Atkins dieter can manage to digest a chocolate granola bar.

"That was...cool." Vanellope comments, grasping the pendant in her own pocket, the warmness of it and whatever secrets it held within.

"Let's move. The gate is just up ahead!"

The gate that leads into the graveyard, dwelling place of that bizarre THING the memory of which still chilled Vanellope to her hard candy bone, but she had to see he who calls himself Sticky at all costs.


	13. Sticky Situation, Part 1

The pungent odor of burnt marshmallows verges on overpowering as they step beyond the arched gateway, and the enclosed area looked like something straight out of a horror movie: a foggy old burial yard with a small grove of sagging sour worm trees in the center. The overgrown tufts of withered mint grass that sprout out here and there featuring clumps of prickly Nerds candies that cling unto Vanellope's clothes and socks when she walked past them, as if the very earth were against her being here.

Wynnchel, oblivious to his charge's surmounting fear, stops and takes a breath of relief as he puts his gun back in its holster. "Now let's see what we can do about that bite."

He snatches Vanellope's jacket and tears off a sleeve.

"Can't you just use that thing to heal me?" She motions with her hand to the pendant, the chain of which was still draping out of his pocket.

The doughnut pauses mid-First Aid and stares at her with his eye doughs pulled, giving him an agitated look. "Just how many marbles did you lose when those guys strung you up like a chocolate moose?"

She gathered he was referring to whatever lead to her pleasant experience with zombie Candlehead and the dead Malarkey so she asks about it, but Wynnchel refuses to answer as he applies the makeshift bandage.

"Perhaps it's better we didn't sit and chat right at this moment." He says with a slight laugh, and the matter is dropped like a cluster of cotton candy from clammy claws on a circus wheel...for now.

They get moving again, but navigating between the tightly packed grave markers is not easy for the exhausted Vanellope. And the pain of her dino-bitten arm - despite Wynnchel's assurance that the wound looked worse than it actually was - did not assist matters either. Most distracting of all though, was that other THING that still weighed on her mind.

"You saw that? In this graveyard?"

"As opposed to the graveyard next door?"

The Chief's calm demeanor undergoes a complete switch when she tells him about the entity with the gigantic sword and triangular dome covering its head.

"I'm pretty fudging sure it wasn't one of those derpy dinosaurs." Vanellope adds, shifting her eyes around nervously. "If there's only one unlocked gate, it's still gotta still be in here, right?" Although by the looks of that thing it could probably cleave through one of the locked gates as easily as if they were made of buttermilk biscuit.

"Keep your eyes open, and holler if you need me to shoot at something." He says, discreetly mumbling about something about her being 'crazy as an inside-out Oreo'. "Sticky's just over that hill, a little ways into the complex."

Sticky. Vanellope could hardly believe she was now this close to meeting with the person behind the voice that pulled her into this world to begin with, and she was already had a growing list of things to ask about.

But when she thought about it, Vanellope was not even sure of whether to refer to Sticky as a he or she anymore. Could there exist a simple explanation for why Sticky's voice sounded distinctly masculine on the phone, or had whatever was afflicting Sugar Rush change her dear friend as well?

In any case, Vanellope had experienced enough change lately, and she could not help but think how peachy it would be if things just returned to the way they were after the reset.

Vanellope...

Wynnchel leads her up a barren hill, where rows of undisturbed ancient jawbreaker mausoleums stood like glucose gilded guardians of the dead. From somewhere among them concealed within inky black shadows, Vanellope heard a voice call her name. A light and airy, girl's voice.

Vanellope...

She closes her hand around the pendant in her pocket tightly, trying to contain the flow of red, sticky liquid pouring forth from its 'eyes'.

"President?" She can hear Wynnchel ask, but he might as well have been talking through a glass of champagne cola.

For a split second, the image of a girlsweet with neon green hair being cornered by three formless, unidentifiable monsters against a small campfire flashes in Vanellope's mind.

Your friend is in danger...

"Earth to President Von Schweetz..." Wynnchel says as he lays a hand on her shoulder, which jars her back to reality.

She whirls around, looks at him with eyes as big as caramel apples.

"Sticky's in trouble."


	14. Sticky Situation, Part 2

I was making good headway with the burning when my behelit began to cry, signalling the emergence of the unsavory supernatural elements dwelling along the furthest boundaries of the light cast by the fire. Even without calling upon my behelit power I can sense the way they did not belong with the natural data flow, like a colony of ants living in a lollipop.

Bonesaw in one hand, I discard the detached arm of Swizzle Malarkey into the fire with the other, and turn to face my three stalkers: semi-sentient globs of flesh with sharp metallic objects poking out of their carapaces nudging toward me in a way similar to slugs, trailing a glistening slick of blood behind them.

"I know there's more to you buggers than this."

And I was right. As they draw closer, they undergo a transformation. They stand, becoming at least five feet tall, and what I had thought were their entire bodies turned out to be shells, their real selves gray and humanlike but with thorned tentacles that grow in place of arms long enough to drape across the ground, and the heads of all three are completely devoid of any physical features.

I hold up the behelit hanging from my wrist to release its power.

Let's see what these Sour Patch Kids have in store for me.

The one closest to me would swing its left tentacle and I, anticipating the horizontal swing, would weave out of the way only to receive the follow-up attack with its other tentacle across my face. Momentarily stunned, I wouldn't be able to defend myself as it coils its left tentacle around my neck and pulls me toward its torso, where a mouth full of razor sharp teeth would finish me off.

That, it goes without saying, would be no good. Adjustments would have to be made.

I take a deep breath as the aura of the behelit subsides, and I brace myself for the first strike.

When it comes, instead of sidestepping to dodge I drop to the floor. Then, I Tootsie roll to the left and avoid being hit by the next tentacle strike.

"I think I'll cut you down a peg."

I bury the bone saw into its right ankle and, propping up my leg for leverage, roll behind it while still gripping the handle so that the foot is chopped off cleanly.

The monster topples over facefirst faster than any self-respecting trick-or-treater can turn down an Almond Joy.

The behelit highlights the vulnerable points of my tentacled friend's shell, and I plunge the saw through one so deep that my knuckle grazes against the leathery surface.

One down, two to go.

"Who's next?"

...

By the time Vanellope and Wynnchel make it to the campsite, in an open park area featuring an angel cake fountain spewing grimy green water hidden deep within the mausoleum complex, Sticky has already dealt with all three monsters.

Arms and fingers steeped in strawberry jam and real blood, she has returned to the tedious task of throwing loose body parts - squirming hands, arms, feet, legs, torsos and heads - that were organized into seperate, scavenged boxes labelled innocent things like 'Cute Muffin Cupcakes' and 'Berry Cheery Cherries' into the fire to dispose of them.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're alright! I had this horrible feeling something bad was going to happen." Vanellope calls and runs to her excitedly. Sticky looked exactly the same as she did before the cutesy variety party game inexplicably became a survival-horror singleplayer.

Vanellope is about to tackle hug her friend when, hearing the clicking sound of Wynnchel loading his gun, she freezes in place.

"Put your hands behind your head and don't make any sudden movements." He says in a commanding tone.

She looks sideways at mister armed and delicious. Down the nose of the loaded pistol pointed at her back. "What's going on?"

"Do what he says, sweetie." Sticky says with a coldness in her voice Vanellope had never heard before.

Vanellope...

The voices return as her head spins from all that was going on.

"Now back up toward me. No sudden movements."

"Sticky, why are you letting him do this?"

Wynnchel slaps a cold pair of handcups on her and locks them. The way he pulls at her arms to make them fit causes her wound to open back up, and it starts to bleed again in a narrow trickle.

"Wynnchel, your baton please?" She holds out a hand to receive the black club from her accomplice.

Vanellope can only look at Sticky, who expresses not even the slightest sliver of joy at their reunion or even remorse for what she was about to do, holding the baton high above her head, another of the red pendants dangling from the wrist.

"Hold still."

I'm sorry...

The baton comes down on the top of Vanellope's skull hard and she blacks out.


	15. Sticky Situation, Part 3

When Vanellope returns to her senses, she finds herself in a small cell that is dark except for the dim beam of moonlight that trickles in through a square cut in the wall the size of a Butterfingers. Her wrists were no longer restrained and she could walk around the room freely, so she feels along the smooth walls of part hardened oatmeal part stone for an exit, but finds nothing.

She was trapped and the pendant had been taken from her, although by who she could not bring herself to believe.

"Sticky did this." Vanellope says aloud, but it still did not make any sense - why would Sticky rescue her from Candlehead only to have her lock up again? Or send Wynnchel to protect her from the fruit snack dinosaurs? Surely there was more to this story.

But despite all doubts, her head still throbbed from the unrestrained baton blow and her hair was matted in dried sugar-blood, so it was impossible to deny what had happened as much as the beaten and bruised little bite wanted to.

_She betrayed you..._

It was that voice again. How dare she. It. Whatever the source was.

"You said she was in trouble."

I guess I was wrong. And now, it looks you're the one who's in trouble...

"You think?" Vanellope snarks, flailing her arms emphatically. Then, she plops down in one corner of the room with her head bowed. "Just leave me alone."

_I can help you get out of this mess. _

"No, no, no. I've already seen what happens when you blindly follow disembodied voices, and I'm through being a sucker." Her voice softens to a mere mumble, as her consciousness starts to slip away like frosting ornaments on a birthday cake at a crowded party.

"I am so done...I don't even know who you are..."

"Hey Vanellope, your marshmallow's getting burned."

...

A heartbeat she can not only feel, but hear.

Vanellope is by the cemetery campfire, grasping a stick with a marshmallowey chunk over the dancing flames.

She is sharing the yummy remains of fallen fellow sugarlanders with Sticky, who sits crosslegged on a candy lincoln log across from her, giggling.

"I'm alright. Just been thinking about tomorrow."

"You don't have to go if you don't want to." Sticky says, then takes another bite from whatever nameless organ she had last acquired from the Cheery Cherries bin. "Personally, I don't trust that Muttonfudge. Never did, really."

"At least they'll probably have something better to eat at the town than...this." Vanellope says, waving her hand to indicate the gruesome gore-filled boxes, scanning them with a look of mock disgust. "Like, I haven't had a candy corn pizza in forever."

"You know, I wouldn't hold it against you if..."

"If what?"

"If you decided stay with them. For good."

"Don't be silly. I would never leave you like that!"

"Liar."

Vanellope looks at her sharply, but is shocked by what she sees.

"She's deceiving you Vanellope, don't listen to her lies." Sticky says, her voice replaced by the disembodied girl's, as her facial features melt away, leaving behind a virtual blank slate.

A heartbeat, accompanied by an echoed scream.

The image of a red pendant dangling from Sticky Wipplesnit's hand flashes past.

The pendant grins.

A billboard emerges from the fog. Vanellope strains her eyes looking at this sign and mouths the words, 'Welcome to Sugar Hill' painted across it.

A handful of Sugar Rush racers armed to the teeth with all manner of sugar-based ordinance appear, standing in a row, with Taffyta Muttonfudge in the center: Swizzle Malarkey, Candlehead, Jubileena Bing-Bing, Snowanna Rainbeau, Creumbelina Di Carmello, Rancis Fluggerbutter, Citrusella-

Taffyta steps forward.

"Vanellope! You're a sight for sour pies." She says, and they exchange hugs. "So, have you given my invitation some thought?"

"Yeah. I've decided...I'll go."

Taffyta and company shatter into a million pop rocks and the scene fades away.

A heartbeat, and a wicked laugh.

Three racers hanging in chains. A Malarkey to the left, a Candlehead to the right, a Vanellope that should never have opened her eyes between them.

Candlehead's eyelids flutter open. Her pupils are glowing a sinister red.

The girl with a bleach blonde bob and superstar tanned skin looks on, grinning from ear to ear as everything that she set up falls into motion.

A heartbeat, and Vanellope returns to the cleared out crypt where her unconscious body had been dragged to by Wynnchel and Sticky.

Reunited with the strawberry gash on her skull, and her mind now abuzz with a swarm of superimposed memories, Vanellope reaches for the thin bar of light on the wall.

Wrapping her fingers around the corners of the window, she pulls herself up and yells at the top of her lungs just one word:

"Sticky!"

...little knowing that Sticky was standing directly outside touching her glowing pendant against the crypt wall, a single tear sliding down her cheek.


	16. One Month Later

A trio of pastries: one blueberry danish, one mildly overcooked apple turnover and one palmier in the shape of a heart are being torn to bits in a park by a slew of unremorseful, mottled skinned slack jawed, yellow overgrown fingercorns sporting mutations of once ordinary Sugarfolk.

Flaky crumbs and delectable goo of multiple colors fly in all directions as the deadly weapon wielding tie dye dreadlocked dame ducking behind a nearby bush watches.

Having waited for the right opportunity to make a move, she sets the satchel on her back down by a tree and draws a scratched and worn katana from its sheath.

Crouching, she tiptoes like a fruit ninja toward the turned back of the closest cretin.

Whoosh!

In one fell swoop she beheads the first zombie and the anguished cries produced by its still mobile head alert its buddies to her presence.

Snowanna Rainbeau smashes the chattering skull beneath her foot and braces for a fight.

When one zombie tries to reach for her, the ex-anchorwoman effortlessly weaves out of his reach then CHOPS OFF the offending arm. The other zombie tries to interfere but she just KICKS IT away and proceeds to slice off the first attacker's other arm. Without skipping a beat she spins gives the second one a similar treatment in a series of quick vertical slashes.

She was simply too quick and her strikes too precise for the mindless lumbering brutes to put up any sort of resistance.

"Excellent work madam!"

"Shut up." Snowanna snaps back whilst dislocating mushy zombie jaws with a dagger as casually as if she were cutting a cake.

"Oh sweet fondue, a savior has arrived!" The ravaged but still alive danish exclaims, dragging its limp body toward Snowanna. He kisses her foot, repeating thanks several times before she pulls it away.

"What are you doing here?" Snowanna asks sternly.

"Oh good samaritan, those three looked like regular folks in need of some guidance so my party approached to offer our goodwill, but they attacked us." He shares between overdramatic sobs in Shakespearan tones and over the top hand gestures, then looks at the still bodies of his friends then at their recently handicapped killers, Fiori di Sicilia tears running down its face. "Well, what are you waiting for? Won't you finish off these villains? In the name of the sacred egg, my friends and I are from the village and were just out scavenging, minding our own-"

"I thought I told you to shut your piehole."

Snowanna drives her spiked boot through the talkative thesbian treat's tongueholder, reducing him to nothing more than a big custardy mess with a few aggravated stomps.

For this you might think her cold, but to Snowanna this was just another day in Sugar Kill. What's that? Sugar Rush? Sugar Rush never existed. Sugar Kill is and always has been the name of the game as far as she was concerned. In Sugar Kill it is kill or be killed, and to show mercy to a rival scavenger was the quickest way to resign oneself to the latter. Snowanna is a survivor too proud to allow herself the comfort of death.

"Now let's see what you babies have for Mama Snow today." She says as she gathers the travel items of the dead num-nums gang, ranging from granola bars to a portable grill and first aid equipment spread out between three backpacks. These, along with her own candy floss sewn satchel, she hoists unto the backs of her newly employed growling, unruly packmules.

Before setting off with the backpacked zombies trailing behind her on seperate licorice chain leashes, she scoops up a handful of warm apple stuffing for a quick snack on the go. That is when she first notices the jade green pair of eyes that had been watching her from another set of bushes.

"Hey, come over here." Snowanna commands, but miss eager peepers flees under cover; providing only a passing glimpse at her chubby face and flowing hair that was the same color as her eyes, as she retreated into a densely wooded area.

Thinking that the girl might have been a friend of the recently deceased pastries gone off to rally the troops, Snowanna hurriedly ties her pets up to a tree and goes searching for the green girl.

"I promise I won't hurt you." She lies, pushing through the brush with one hand and gripping the hilt of her sword with the other.

The emptiness of the park is no less eerie than any other time Snowanna had been there. During her chase she still found it hard to take in the childless sandboxes, paved walkways deprived of baby strollers, and benches sans any variation of hairy trench coat draped creep.

Eventually she makes it to a wide open area where grassy mounds sprawl out before her. She spots a pair of deer mingling with each other, but there is no sight of the girl.

...that is, until she comes twirling, dancing, jumping down the facing hill in Snowanna's direction.

"What the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?"

The deer prance alongside the girl as if they were friendly companions, but before the confused Snowanna can react, a parade of undeadsweets come charging down the hill in pursuit of her target.

"Hey, Dances with Deer!" Snowanna shouts while waving her arms trying to get the girl's attention.

Minty Sakura stops everything.

She stares at the sword holding girl with the rainbow afro. Although even the doofus deer are at this point aware of the incoming threat and now bounding off to safety, all she could think about was how imposing the girl pleading for her attention looked as the clouds overhead clustered together and darkened.


	17. Sharkleberry Fin

The rain came all at once in a massive downpour. Droplets heavy like bullets pound unto the asphalt and paint the dried out grass. It totally drenches Minty Sakura's wild hair, and longsleeved blouse so ragged it might as well have been a longsleeved potato sack.

Minty ducks, covering the back of her head as the adorable army of evil sugar munchkins closes in.

"Watch out, chick!" Snowanna shouts as she reaches the foot of the hill, dragging a katana now featuring a countless amount of sharp looking icicles sprouting out along its blade.

Around the hilt is a necklace fitted with a red pendant bleeding profusely from its carved eyes.

"Leave that mint alone and come get a mouthful o' this dark chocolate if you're brave enough, sugars!"

With a swing of her sword, daggerlike ice shards are sent flying which grow in size, shatter apart and thus multiply in midair as the water molecules in the air freeze over. Upon contact they dismember, decapitate, impale, and basically tear apart every zombie they hit.

As the first wave falls to the icy onslaught in a chorus of dull grunts and groans, Snowanna goes to the cowering Sakura's side.

She continues fighting at close range, mowing down several targets at once with each wave of the frosted flake.

As she swivels out of the way of an attack, she almost trips on Minty.

"What are you doing just sitting there, girl?" She asks the dampened lump trembling in fear at her feet, then plunges her sword into a zombie's chest. Between two pretzel rib cages it becomes wedged.

All the while Minty just keeps rocking back and forth whispering to herself, even as the candy crushing cannibals come within arm's distance of them in every direction.

"Sour gumdrops!" Snowanna curses. When she finally gets her sword loose she can feel their claws and teeth grabbing at her flesh; their rancid, hot breath all over her body.

But she was not going to let it all end here. Screw the dancing deer whisperer, she was not about to let herself die trying to protect anysweet.

With a fierce growl, she launches a fully powered pulse of refrigerated air from her wrists that envelops and immobilizes all the zombies, each raindrop and blade of grass, and every tree within a five yard radius in a fine layer of ice.

Everything that had been made wet by the rain was now dead as a popsicle except for Snowanna; who looked no worse for wear, although the attack left her feeling exhausted to the point where she was hardly able to stand.

"Wait a second..."

Whereas the environment and those pesky pukebreath phantasms were now popsicles, the girl who started it all had apparently moved; unaffected by the cold snap.

Minty Sakura was a blubbering mess now, with her arms wrapped around the frozen neck of one of the zombies.

She glares at the Ice Queen through eyes flowing with sharkleberry fin red tears. "What was that for? Why did you kill my friends?"

...

"How're you feeling?"

Vanellope stirs at the sound of Sticky's voice, bouncing off the walls in the cozy crypt-for-one.

She has for a month been denied any contact with the outside world, her only source of food being three seperate servings of edible limbs thrown in through the window by Wynnchel every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner; usually with some vague words of encouragement. "Keep your chin up, kid", "you're doing great" and things like that. Never seen, always heard.

It all seemed so surreal.

This is the first she has seen of Sticky; now with her jacket tied around her waist, wearing just a plain yellow tanktop with the usual green skirt and leggings featuring a wavy design.

"Sticky..."

Without any warning, Sticky pulls Vanellope into a hug. It catches her off guard, but she was too frail to resist. Weeks of being constantly bombarded by headache-inducing mental images on a forced cannibal diet will do that to a person.

"Hate to see you like this, hun, but it's for your own good." Sticky says, squeezing the despondent prisoner tighter. "I know it hurts, but soon you'll understand."

Saying this entire ordeal 'hurt' was a huge understatement. For Vanellope, every waking moment was plagued by nausea, aching pains, a struggle between life and death that boiled within her, as the harsh imprisonment seemed to stretch on without end.

She couldn't even bring herself to tell Sticky off to her face, as much as she wanted to; as strong as the feelings of frustration and betrayal were that rose up within her.

"Why am I here...?" For that matter, why are you here? Why now? Are you here to finish me off? Is that what you mean by it not being much longer? You had your fun and now you're gonna kill me?

"I wanted to show you something." Sticky says with a strikingly sincere tone, looking directly into Vanellope's eyes.

She holds up a piece of reflective glass.

"Look at your face."

In her reflection, Vanellope is greeted by pale, almost white skin and sunken eyes with black bags over her eyelids that glisten like mascara. With a trembling finger she traces the shadows along her sunken, hollow cheekbones, and along the dual trails of dried red liquid that reach from her eyes to her more pronounced jawbone.

"What's happening...to me?"

"You're changing, Vanellope. You're turning into one of them."


	18. The Walrus

Wynnchel enters the room on Sticky's cue with a battered looking radio on hand. This he sets on the ground in one corner and presses the play button.

An ascending piano trill.

God is a concept...by which we measure...our... pain.

Vanellope growls like an animal gummy. "I don't believe it!" She blurts out, then knocks the piece of glass out of Sticky's hand. "You're killing me!"

...I'll say it again.

"We're trying to help you." Sticky says as Wynnchel hands her two pairs of handcuffs. "Just hang on and you'll be alright. Whatever you do, don't let go. Of me, of yourself, of your memories, don't let go."

God is a concept...by which...we measure...our...pain.

Vanellope attempts to resist, but is tossed unto the ground facefirst by the much tougher Wipplesnit.

"Taffyta used her powers on you. Probably wiped your memories, chewed you up and spat you out."

She clamps the first set of cuffs around her wrists.

I don't believe in magic.

Vanellope returns to the room where she had been hanging from the ceiling. Hanging alongside her in a similar fashion to the left is Sticky.

"She left you and Swizzle Malarkey to die."

I don't believe in I-ching.

"Candlehead turned without anyone to control it, and Malarkey was killed because of it." Sticky's face morphs into that of zombie candlehead. "It's too late for her now." The entire illusion disappears.

I don't believe in Bible.

"Taffyta? Where does she fit in?"

Flash to the mental image of Taffyta and most of the other Sugar Rush characters, gathered to greet Vanellope by the Welcome to Sugar Hill billboard.

I don't believe in Tarot.

"She found us, and wanted us to join her village. You went, even though I chose to stay."

I don't believe in Hitler.

Sticky suddenly steps out of the crowd, and everything but her and Vanellope fades away.

"She took you to where my powers couldn't keep watch over you, so why she wanted to kill you is beyond me. I didn't find out you were in trouble until it was too late."

I don't believe in Jesus.

A giant version of one of the red pendants appears behind her, its features contorted into a gruesome smile.

"Those creepy pendants..."

I don't believe in Kennedy.

"Everyone who holds one has access to a power that's unique to them-"

"Hold on. That, I kinda sorta figured out myself. More importantly, who comes up with sick stuff like this?"

I don't believe in Buddha.

A pulse of warmth. Sticky must have smiled at that. "A recolor gave me one before all of this happened, told me I should hang unto it. A behelit, is what she called it."

Its eyes open and sparkle at the mention of the name, startling Vanellope.

"By the next day, the virus had landed."

"Should have known a virus was behind everything."

I don't believe in mantra.

Jump back to the mental image of the two sitting around a campfire eating limbs.

"But you did know, sweetie. That is, before Taffyta went to work on you. First it was just you and me, then we came across Wynnchel and Duncan."

I don't believe in Gita.

The two donut officers are suddenly sitting around the fire, too. "Howdy." Duncan waves with the hand not currently holding unto a tongue and eyeball kebab.

"What happened to Duncan?"

I don't believe in Yoga.

Wynnchel looks up from the fire. "The same that's happening to you right now. Only, we'd never seen a zombie before that. Just figured the old boy went cuckoo, so we cut him loose."

I don't believe in Kings.

The campfire fizzles away, but even as darkness takes over, Vanellope never loses sight of Sticky.

"Kind of a weird choice of music for a time like this."

"Really? We used to listen to this very same CD, like, all the time."

I don't believe in Elvis.

"It was all we had, just to keep in touch with the way things were before the virus."

"Hey, why don't we go there now?"

I don't believe in Zimmerman.

Sugar Rush, looking just as Vanellope remembered it, fills the empty space. She walks along the cherry swirl street holding hands with Sticky, gingerbread houses, gingerbread apartment complexes, gingerbread used car lots and supermarket chains (also gingerbread) flanking them on either side.

After a half-empty butterscotch pudding cup rolls down the road, Vanellope spots a radio on a windowsill playing, nearing the end of God by John Lennon.

I don't believe in Beatles.

"Wait a second."

Vanellope stands still, as everything in the simulated city of sweets comes to a complete halt. The pudding cup, that just drove by. A munchkin, setting a freshly baked blueberry pie out on a windowsill for it to cool. A chocolate dove, in midair. All is completely frozen.

"There's still one thing missing in all this."

Without warning, Sticky grabs ahold of Vanellope's arms and pulls and kisses her on the lips.

I just believe...in me...

...

"Jesus Christ Sticky, she's turning. Get away from her!"

...and that reality.

Wynnchel had drawn his gun and was about to shoot the almost completely transformed Von Schweetz, when he was quickly reminded of how futile it is to attempt to catch somebody with clairvoyance powers off guard.

The dream is over...

In a last ditch effort, Sticky threw herself on top of Vanellope - effectively shielding her - and just started unloading everything: her regrets regarding the Taffyta situation, her overwhelming sadness at seeing her sweetheart reduced to such a sordid state in a storm of frantic kisses, and pent up lust, in a storm of frantic kisses and touchy-feely action.

...what can I say?

Even though her eyes were rolled back into her head, her teeth had become razor sharp and her speech was steadily being replaced by meaningless grunts and groans, Sticky knew the Vanellope she loved was still in there somewhere; she just needed a little coaxing.

The dreaaaam is over.

"Can't you see it's too late?" Wynnchel pleads, trying his hardest to pull Sticky loose.

Yesterdaaay.

Vanellope leans her head back and snarls.

"I won't give up on you." Sticky declares through tears, tearing away Vanellope's clothes so that bare skin meets bare, bone white skin. "Please, wake up!"

...

Flash to a night at the cemetery two girls have called 'home' for quite a while now. For the first time they share the same futon, awkwardly, bare skin against bare skin.

The portable radio at their feet plays a familiar tune.

"Hey, Sticky." Vanellope says, staring up at the stars glimmering through the omnipresent fog.

I waaas the dreamweaveeer...

"Yeah?"

"I had the weirdest dream while I was hanging around there. Kind of like this, only longer, and I was still in Sugar Rush."

But noooow, I'm reborn.

"Only there was hunting and extreme sports, and these crazy deer in it. Actually you were in it, too."

Sticky nuzzles Vanellope's cheek with her jelly bean nose, blushing. "Was I?"

"Uh-huh. And, you know what's funny? I think that weird dream might have saved my life." She says, and turns to Sticky. The brown of her eyes is cast a mesmerizing yellow-orange by the light of the fire, and as Vanellope gazes into them the singing voice of The Man Behind Imagine dissolves into the background.

"I can forgive you for this bump the size of a rainbow swirl lollipop on my head and a few weeks of bad accomodations 'cuz really, I wouldn't even be alive right now if it weren't for you. You've always had my back, since I've known you. Guess all I'm trying to say is thank you."

"I won't deny that I've saved your pop tarts on more than one occasion, but you don't have to thank me." She squeezes in closer. "Mm, as long as I can help it, your pop tarts are safe and sound."

Vanellope kisses her on the forehead."Sounds like you need some sleep." She says.

"And you need to wake up, sweetie."

...

Vanellope places her shaking hand unto Sticky's back.

Wynnchel, taken aback, stashes his gun. "No way. Kid, you're alive?"

Sticky pulls away to take a look for herself.

"Vanellope!"

Although her skin is still pale - as it will be for the next few days - her eyes are back to normal, and the tender mounds of her exposed chest heaving up and down with each desperete gasp for air lost while in a state of being neither alive nor dead.

"First my jacket," She says, grinning and wiping off the beads of sweat on her forehead, "And now, my shirt."


	19. Search Party

"This game is changing...oh boy, is it changing. Going to shit, that's what. Everywhere you go it's zombies, killing, guns, freakin' cannibalism...sex...heck, the fact that I was even able to get off saying the word 'shit' is enough a testament to how shitty everything's become. It just ain't right, man."

Citrusella Flugpucker looks up at the foggy night sky and pretends to shoot at the moon with her long arm, red-laser sighted sniper rifle. Loaded with over ninety rounds of armor penetrating bullets that featured highly concentrated orange juice cores, each one was strong enough to kill a man on its own by flooding his entire bloodstream with a strong, tangy acid. It was custom-built by Flugpucker herself, and boy was she proud of it.

"You up, Gloyd?" She asks, nudging the candy corn lump asleep next to her with one elbow. "Huh, Gloyd?" She nudges him harder. He was the one stupid enough to wear dark sunglasses in a game that takes place in eternal night, so it's not like he could blame her for not being able to tell if he was awake.

"Sure..."

They are laying side-by-side in the bed of a pickup truck parked on the side of the road by some trees, waiting. Waiting for what? Well, something.

"You're losin' me, Gloyd."

"Yeah, whatever you say..." He mumbles, still only half awake.

"Hey, Gloyd, did you hear that?" She jumps up upon hearing something rustling in the bushes nearby. "I'm gonna turn up some Elvis, for just in case."

"Oh please, no more Elvis. Anything but Elvis."

She rummages through the plastic tub full of loose cds. "We got here some KC and The Sunshine Band, and I'll wager you like her."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Gloyd says, grunting as he attempts to right himself. "And KC and The Sunshine Band has both guys and girls, so referring to it as a her is just plain wrong."

As the opening rhythm of a certain track that involves a whole lot of booty shaking starts to play on the portable radio, you could tell Citrusella really wanted to bust an orangey cap in something because she won't stop pointing her gun everywhere.

"D'you think they're finding anything?" She asks, a little too hopefully, at which Gloyd groans and rolls his eyes for maybe the thousandth time. "Wait! I know I heard something this time. In that bush over there."

Meanwhile at an abandoned NPC Hotel within sight of the unlikely duo, a party comprised of an assortment of candies ranging from peanut butter cups to strips of saltwater taffy to blueberry ring pops are busybodying around at what had once been a dazzling ballroom which has, since the virus hit, fallen into disrepair. The sweet snacks are turning it this way, that way, and upside down on a scavenger hunt in search of...something, with only a single-digit amount of citrusene lamps (another fine Flugpucker product) on hand to aid their vision.

Rancis Fluggerbutter strolls down the center of the room with his hands in his coat pockets, stopping abruptly when he notices something odd on the ground next to a toppled dining table, partially concealed by some rocks.

"A Kabbalah bracelet?" He says aloud, as he picks it up for a closer inspection.

Minty Zaki, wearing a silver suit of armor that leaves her torso completely exposed, a short burgundy chainmail skirt with plated steel greaves covering her legs, and a long, flowing white cape enters the room, personal unit of bouncy gumdrops following her in a two straight lines.

"Heya, detective." She says and, by issuing a special salute, sends the entourage of gumdrops off to assist with the search. As she approaches Rancis, her eyes fix on the hipster-religion advocating piece of armwear in his hand. "What's that you've got there?"

Francis blinks a couple times, and tries his best not to stare.

Minty's habit of showing up in various costumes was something everyone from the village was aware of, but considering the seriousness of the investigation at hand, it was making him feel really uncomfortable. However, being that she was the Chief of Public Security and more devoted to her position than she looked at times, he had little choice but to cooperate with her.

He clears his throat. "Ahem. Well, this ornament definitely belonged to Malarkey." He says, handing it over. "And it's a little wet, with what appears to be blood."

"Something attacked them?"

"There's no way of knowing that for sure. We still need more clues." He says, looking around randomly, as if hoping he would just happen upon another small hint.

But it would appear Chief Zaki is one step ahead of him.

"I've got something you might want you to check out." She says, holding out her hand.

Immediately one of the gumdrop peons swings by to bring her a broken piece of chain.

"It turns out these chains were corroded somehow. Because of this, one of the prisoners was able to break free."

"What kind of guns were Swizzle and Candlehead equipped with while on guard duty that day?"

Minty shakes her head.

"None, actually. It was determined some time ago that both their powers are incompatible with guns and other forms of weaponry. They both had their behelits, but we've recovered only this one so far." On cue another gumdrop passes by, this time carrying the uncanny pendant that was found in one of the far corners of the room. "Could one of them have helped the prisoner get loose?"

Rancis focuses his attention on a citrusene lamp set on a rickety table. The faint orange glow it produces gives him an idea.

"Do you think highly concentrated orange juice could have been used to weaken the chains?"

The Police Chief cosplaying as a knight from every Fantasy RPG ever scratches her chin, giving it some thought. "From what I know, that would have taken time. But if we're going to talk citrusene, I think we ought to bring in the expert."

The peanut butter cup operating the communications array signals for Minty with a pair of headcones. "Chief, the watch team says they found something that demands your urgent attention."

"Sorry detective, I need to take this." She says to Rancis, then puts on the pair of headcones with a mic attached. "Yeah? Zaki here."

Gloyd Orangboar was speaking on the other end, and Rancis watches as he produces a candy cigar from his right coat pocket, Zaki's facial expression be turned around completely at least twice during the conversation.

As soon as the call had ended and she removed the headphones, she begins rounding up all available gumdrops.

"So, what's the situation?" Rancis asks with a lit cherry bomb monstrosity sticking out of his mouth.

There is such a unique mix between raw, lifted excitement and hesitant displeasure in her voice when she says, "They found... Candlehead" that it makes Fluggerbutter at once concerned.


End file.
